Bob Dylan in America

Zusatztext 51818118 Informationen zum Autor Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University. He is the author of The Rise of American Democracy , which received the coveted Bancroft Prize, and most recently of The Age of Reagan . The historian-in-residence for Bob Dylan’s official We site, he has also received a Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary and a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to Bootleg Series , Vol. 6: Bob Dylan, Live 1964: The Concert at Philharmonic Hall . Klappentext A unique look at Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan's place in American cultural history through unprecedented access to Dylan's studio tapes! recording notes! and rare photographs.Sean Wilentz discovered Bob Dylan's music as a teenager growing up in Greenwich Village. Now! almost half a century later! he revisits Dylan's work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan. Beginning with Dylan's explosion onto the scene in 1961! Wilentz follows the emerging artist as he develops a body of work unique in America's cultural history. Using his unprecedented access to studio tapes! recording notes! and rare photographs! he places Dylan's music in the context of its time and offers a stunning critical appreciation of Dylan both as a songwriter and performer. PART I: BEFORE   1   MUSIC FOR THE COMMON MAN:   The Popular Front and Aaron Copland's America   Early in October 2001, Bob Dylan began a two-month concert tour of the northern United States. In his first performances since the terrorist attacks of September 11, Dylan debuted many of the songs on his new album, "Love and Theft," including the prescient song of disaster, "High Water (for Charley Patton)." Columbia Records, eerily, had released "Love and Theft" on the same day that the terrorists struck. How, if at all, would Dylan now respond to the nation's trauma? Would he, for once, speak to the audience? What would he play?   The new tour had no opening act, but as a concert prelude the audience heard (as had become commonplace at Dylan's shows) a prerecorded selection of orchestral music. And on this tour, Dylan began playing what may have seemed a curious choice: a recording of the "Hoe-Down" section of Aaron Copland's Rodeo. Then Dylan and his band took the stage and, with acoustic instruments, further acknowledged the awfulness of the moment, while also marking Dylan's changes and continuities over the years, by playing the country songwriter Fred Rose's "Wait for the Light to Shine":   When the road is rocky and you got a heavy load                         Wait for the light to shine   For the rest of the month, through fifteen shows, Dylan opened with "Wait for the Light to Shine," often after hitting the stage to "Hoe-Down." He would continue to play snatches of Rodeo at his concerts for several tours to come, and now and then he would throw in the opening blasts of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man or bits of Appalachian Spring. Copland's music from the 1940s served as Dylan's call to order, his American invocation. Sixty years on, whether he knew it or not, Dylan had closed a mysterious circle, one that arced back through the folk-music revival where he got his start to the left-wing New York musical milieu of the Great Depression and World War II.   Anyone familiar with Dylan's music knows about its connections to the 1930s and 1940s through the influences of Woody Guthrie and, to a lesser extent, Pete Seeger. But there are other connections as well, to a broader world of experimentation with American music and radical politics during the Depression years and after. These larger connections are at times quite startling, especially during the mid-1930s, when shared leftist politics brought together in New York a wide range of composers and musicians not usual...

Product details

• Authors: Sean Wilentz
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.10.2011
• EAN: 9780767931793
• ISBN: 978-0-7679-3179-3
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 137 mm x 208 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Anchor Books
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies